Here’s one of those cars which suddenly disappeared in most major midwestern cities after plying the streets for years. It must be a similar situation out west where ActuallyMike stopped to shoot this Celebrity Eurosport wagon (note the yellow 1970 Mustang Mach 1 in the background). It seems rather smug parked in front of the Mercedes R-class, a genuine Benz conceived in the minivan mold which proved genuinely unsuccessful here in the US.

Possibly the best looking of the 1982 A-bodies, and the best expression of the then-familiar “sheer” look, the Celebrity, especially in Eurosport trim, was quite popular in its day. This is appears to be 1984 1985; the second year the wagon and Eurosport package were available and the first year the of the multi-port injected V6. In 1986, engine callouts were moved to the front fenders, and a new front clip with wrap-around turn signals was introduced.

The sight of flip-out vent windows means this wagon is equipped with third-row seats, making the tailgate-mounted 2.8 V6 engine call-out more of a relief. The Eurosport trim package was available with the 2.5 liter iron-duke (if not on wagons, then at least on sedans) and made for a somewhat embarrassing combination of convincing good looks and wheezy performance, even for the time. Chevy was justifiably proud of its new 2.8 Multi-Port unit, which made 130 horsepower, provided good performance for the time, and was offered in practically every model, including the Cavalier.

The original buyers of this car were enamored enough of the basic Celebrity to order a number of options, from the aforementioned trim package, third-row seating and big engine, to power assists and a full console, the latter option being somewhat uncommon at the time. With Taurus not yet on the scene, the A-bodies were a compelling enough package for buyers to spec them out, most often with one of the optional V6s, but also with any other Brougham-y and sport-oriented trim packages (Olds’s International Series and Buick’s T-type being especially uncommon sightings nowadays). The ribbon-speedometer and flat front “buckets” seen here are holdovers of 1960s and 1970s thinking, but they were familiar to many buyers, ensuring that the lack of chrome and the slightly-firmer F41 suspension wouldn’t alienate anyone. The larger-engined Cutlass Ciera with FE3 suspension and the AWD-equipped Pontiac 6000 STE were more credible attempts at sportiness and even with the improved Chevy V6, the Eurosport’s main focus was shooting down a straight road with minimal disturbance. But there’s no sense in criticizing this muddled conception of a touring sedan when it’s obvious product planning knew what it was doing: being a celebrity has nothing to do with challenging your audience.

60 Comments

When the Eurosport trim and similar offerings came out, I wondered if they hurt total sales more then they helped. I saw them more as a concession that something European was something superior and muddying the car’s image. At the time, the Pontiac 6000 was still available with woody sides and wire wheel covers. I thought that all would be better off if a distinct look like this would be better as Pontiac’s only look, and avoid labels that seem to be trying too hard on cars like this Chevy.

Modern eyes may just see this as a trim line, like Super Sport before it, but at the time it was indicative of the struggles domestic manufacturers had with finding the correct new direction for their products.

A friend of mine had a Volkwagen Fox wagon (two door) and another friend had an Audi 5000 wagon in mid-80’s/early 90’s about the time these GM cars were being built. I realize the two German cars represent opposite ends of the spectrum with the Celebrity falling somewhere in the middle in terms of price, amenities, and anticipated performance but comparing the three it is obvious GM quite grasp the concept of “eurosport.” Right idea – wrong execution. So very frustrating.

BTW, love the slight break (bend) in the rear glass. This IS European IMO.

The bend in the glass is a very nice detail that I’d never noticed before. I agree, it does call to mind the similar break in the Audi 100 Avant’s rear glass, which came out a year before–but even if they “borrowed” the idea, it still looks nice.

That example isn’t an ’84 – it’s an ’85. And I’ll tell you why it’s an ’85.

The engine designation on the tailgate says “2.8 Multi-Port FI.” 1985 was the first year the ubiquitous 2.8-liter V-6 was available with fuel injection as an option – but you could still get one in carbureted form. I know this because a childhood friend’s mother had an ’85 Celebrity wagon just like this one – however, that one was equipped with the CL and Classic packages, and had wire wheel covers. And it did have the fuel-injected motor, which made my parents’ ’85 Mercury Marquis look like a slug in comparison.

What in the world does a Eurosport have to do with European cars? Nothing at all that I an see. My friends used to joke that surely in a company as big as GM someone had been to Europe and seen what the cars were like.

GM in Europe at the time were building 6 cylinder station wagons front engine RWD like the Senator from Vauxhall and Opel the rear quarter panels and tailgate assemblies were imported from GMH in Australia, very different from this car.

The Celebrity had an optional diesel V6 from ’82-’85, and a gas 4-cylinder was the base engine, even on “Eurosport” cars. You could at least get a manual transmission with the 4-cylinder, which gave it a little more “Euro” – but not really any “sport”, since one of those gears was an overdrive and the engine was the Pontiac Iron Duke!

An Opel Rekord E built in Ohio or Michigan with the hometown Chevy V6 under the hood and a bowtie on the grille likely would’ve been a hit in the U.S. of A. GM South Africa sold their locally-built Opels as Chevrolets, so we can even see what it would’ve looked like. This car would have been a perfect fit at American Chevrolet dealerships back in the early 80s:

These big Opels from the seventies and eighties had an excellent price/quality relationship. The Diplomat from the seventies and later the Senator Mk1 and Mk2 with Opel’s inline six gasoline engines. Really, there was nothing wrong with these cars, but we all know it’s all about image/snob appeal in this class. So Mercedes and BMW won….

Comfortable, roomy and very well-built big sedans (midsize in the US) with straight six engines and automatics at an acceptable price. What’s not to like ?

Sean Cornelis

Posted June 15, 2014 at 9:39 PM

Comfortable, roomy and very well-built big sedans (midsize in the US) with straight six engines and automatics at an acceptable price. What’s not to like ?

I can only think of one thing: that I’d have to cross an ocean to ever see one!

I had two of these when I lived in Ohio; an ’88 and a ’90. The ’90 had the more powerful 3.1 V-6 which could easily get rubber off the line. Both were Eurosports; both 3 seaters. The ’90 didn’t have the flip out vent windows; it did have a slightly sportier/low restriction, large diameter exhaust (stock), so the V-6 had a “throatier” growl more so than the ’88, which had the 2.8 V-6. Sold the ’90 for an ’00 Venture; kept the ’88 for awhile longer. The ’88 had 140K on it when we gave it to the realtor who sold our Cleveland house (we were back in Hawaii). Brake lines rusted from sitting. Both cars would get 28-30 mpg on the highway; both pulled beautifully through the snow and ice. Replaced water pump and serpentine belts on the ’88 at 105K; the ’90 had about 80K on it when sold . . . . loved ’em both. Great highway cars; great winter cars, although the ’88 was starting to bubble up pretty bad towards the end . .

Interesting that you had a ’90. IIRC, that was the last year for the Celebrity, and only the wagon was offered, no other body styles. The Lumina had otherwise taken over the midsize slot in the lineup, but Chevy was concerned that they might lose some midsize buyers who still wanted a wagon (the Lumina didn’t come as a wagon, instead having a companion minivan), so it kept the Celebrity wagon around for another year. The other three nonluxury GM divisions were all still selling their A-bodies as both sedans and wagons, so spreading the cost of tooling wasn’t much of an issue. Sales apparently weren’t high enough to justify keeping the wagon around, though, so it was dropped after that year.

I had these as fleet cars from ’83 on, after we started having some problems with the Caravans. I always had a wagon as a personal car, and still have a ’96 Century with 46k miles.

When the end was near, I got six ’90s with the 3.1. They all went on and on. We sold them out of the fleet and two of them are still going, I see them occasionally. They were all like this – silver birch Euros.

I recall reading that this was one of the most profitable trim levels GM created. It was patterned after the VW Sirocco trim.

Don’t think it would be confused with a Volvo, but it does give it a sort of 740 Wagon look. The black and red trim actually looks kind of sharp on this car. Straightening the front license plate and a pair of thin black frames would help for only a small investment. Interior looks good for the age of the car.

Not a bad little wagon, huh? I have an old, vague memory of reading a somewhat-snarky Car and Driver review of the Celebrity Eurosport, in which the author appropriately dubbed it the “Amerisport.” A nice little car, and cleanly-styled, but with that ribbon speedometer and that velour interior, it wasn’t very Euro.

Amerisport would have been better. I know that many would see it as blasphemy, but Super Sport would have a good choice, and an acknowledgement of Chevy’s heritage, instead of trying to sell this nice looking but terribly named car that seems to say adios to Chevy heritage and Euro is better than American.

Super Sport started life as a trim package, I believe in ’61. The base engine was a 6 cyl.

A clean transition of the Malibu name to this A body would have been even better. Malibu, Malibu LS and Malibu Super Sport. (I was never a fan of the “Classic” designation).

At the end of the day, most Chevy Super Sports have been Pseudo Sports. But, too much truth in advertising is devastating to the bottom line.

This really isn’t a bad looking car, it was pretty efficient in a lot of respects, and performance is relative to an era. Chevy had many bigger dogs in the kennel than this. An admission of weakness for a name did it no favors, and made it extra laughable to folks sold on European cars, the reverse of the marketer’s intentions.

This is quite a good-looking car, perhaps apart from the dashboard but it was the 1980s after all and par for the course apart from the speedometer. The opening windows at the rear including the tailgate are a nice touch, imagine if they faced the third row forward as per Peugeot practice. The mention of the coming wrap-around lights makes me notice there doesn’t appear to be a side-marker at the front – weren’t these required after 1968?

MrF – I would hazard a guess and say it refers to the lack of character/styling lines pressed into the panels, and a less-pronounced version of the fuselage style where the windows and upper door panels are a smooth transition.

They all disappeared when their owners decided it was time to take them out back and shoot them. I had an ’88 with the V6 and it was the most unreliable car I have ever owned (and that is a LONG list of cars!).

I love cars like these because they remind me of being a kid, when they were everywhere. Dad has always driven Fords, so we never had one. But nostalgia doesn’t care how crappy or misnamed they were…I’m 8 again when I see one.

Good question. I lived up close to this era, and I wasn’t sure! GM’s new product launches got very hazy and tended to overlap outgoing models for a year or two – they lost the balls forward attitude of the ’77 full-size launch. This was pretty clearly a replacement for the rear drive ’78 A body mid-size platform, and the concept of a large car was in flux. This may be why they went with the new Celebrity name. If they had to pull the plug on the Caprice on zero notice, they would not be stuck with a traditional second tier name like Malibu as the top car. Eventually, they managed to hang themselves with the Lumina as the top car – it was originally to be the direct replacement to the Caprice, but it had to wait for the second gen for it to happen. The ongoing popularity of the Caprice through the ’80s was a dilemma in GM planning circles.

Yes and no, this was a replacement for the Malibu, but there also was a FWD H-body (Bonneville/88/LeSabre)Caprice replacement planned that was shelved before 1986, which was latter dusted off and placed on the W-body to become the Lumina for 1990, which replaced the Celebrity.

When the RWD B-bodies were discontinued in 1996, it left the W-body Lumina as Chevrolets largest passenger car, sort of what was supposed to happen back in the 80’s, but now Chevy was stuck with its biggest car on the W-body platform, instead of the full size FWD H-body.

I imagine that somewhere along the way, someone with some decision making authority at Chevrolet got cold feet about going all FWD like some of its other GM counterparts and they put the FWD H-body Caprice replacement on permanent hold.

Whats also interesting is that for a few years there was a Celebrity Classic available, which was all broughamed up like a LeSabre Limited or 88 Royale version of a Celebrity complete with a vinyl top and wire wheel covers, plushier interior and some other doodads. It also must have been a hedge in case of gas prices increasing.

I’ve heard of the elusive Chevy H, mostly on this forum. I just don’t recall it from the era. Not that I doubt it, putting an H in at least 4 divisions would have been GM’s normal modus operandi. With no certainty, I seem to recall seeing a first gen Lumina with Caprice tags on it. The messiness is certainly testimony to GM’s excessive platform proliferation.

It was tempting to mention the Celebrity Classic as another reason that Eurosport was a lousy name. At some point a car is trying to be too many things to too many people, and its identity gets lost and nobody cares. The fade away of the initially popular Celebrity may be testimony to that.

The Classic was a surprisingly tidy looking modernized brougham. Maybe one too many runs at this genre. Clean and respectable, I still found it quite boring. Buyers seemed to agree, it wasn’t a huge seller. Until I moved offices in January, I used to see a very dark blue over medium blue Celeb Classic coupe almost daily. Grab a few doodads off a ’67 Caprice and you would have yourself a very traditional car.

The Celebrity Classic is certainly an uncommon sighting these days, but I managed to catch one a couple of years ago (goldtone vinyl roof presumably a non-original color…)

This Eurosport wagon is a legitimately good-looking car though. These wagons in general had much nicer lines than the sedans, and it was made even more true after the “aero” nose refresh for ’86 that just didn’t sit very well with the original formal C-pillar and the concave tail panel.

Weird, never knew a Celebrity Classic existed. One of my friends had a base model ’87 Celebrity that was optioned-out very similarly, though. It had fake wires, a (non-padded) vinyl top, power windows/locks/mirrors/AC/cassette radio, cruise control, useless trunk luggage rack, and the V6/OD automatic… but with a split (power!) bench seat in grey velour and two-tone black/silver paint, the same colors that were so common on early Eurosports.

Aside from the weird options, it was as stereotypically A-body as they come: both an unbelievable piece of shit and totally impossible to kill. Picture the same thing as below, but without the CL badges and with silver paint on the bottom:

principaldan

Posted June 14, 2014 at 7:46 PM

My infamous 1982 Celebrity sedan was a “CL” which made me laugh that a first year car could receive “classic” status. Mine was an Iron Duke, TH125 floor shift, am/fm with equalizer, two tone paint, wire wheel covers, white walls, and lots of fake wood. However no vinyl roof or luggage rack or pillowy interior.

Back when it was introduced the car was advertised to be the “Small Car with the Big Car Ride.” Introducing a Eurosport” version was a recognition that the market had shifted.

We had a string of Celebrities and Eurosports, and my love for the breed is well-established. The wagons, especially with the upgraded wheels, were crisply styled, roomy and quick off the line with the 2.8s.

Mercedes-Benz went to great lengths trying to convince people that the R-Class wasn’t a minivan. I forget what the name they dreamed up for it was – “Family Sports Tourer” or something like that. Maybe they’d have had better luck if they just called it a minivan, or gone all the way and given it sliding rear doors!

I know I’m in the minority, but I thought they were cool as hell – and I liked the very similar Chrysler Pacifica, too.

I remember reading what an engineer said about the original 2bbl. intake on the 2.8L. He said “that’s not an intake, it’s a carb adaptor!”
The intake had a shared plenum and absolutely no ports at all. One of the worst parts ever designed.

cool find.
With the right option boxes checked these handled pretty well, and were “sporty” for the time. Of course that is when sporty mean’t no whitewalls, blacked out trim instead of chrome and a floor shift for the automatic transmission. With the F41 suspension they were pretty fun to drive though.

My mother-in-law had one of these as her last car; hers had a white exterior but it did have the red velour seats that were mandatory GM equipment in the eighties. IIRC hers was acquired used but with low mileage. We borrowed it a few times to haul items that wouldn’t fit in our cars, I remember the car as being okay to drive but not very inspiring. Perhaps I needed to drive it more but I couldn’t find any European influence or any sport in the Celebrity Eurosport. Eventually, as my MIL got older, the car ended up basically sitting in my in-law’s garage. After my MIL died my father in law basically gave the car to his mechanic as payment for fixing it enough to be driveable.

In the summer of ’89 I got , um, seduced by a co-worker in her ’87 Eurosport sedan. To save the commentariat from any lurid details, let’s just say I was happy that her car didn’t have the center console option.

These cars were a huge financial success (especially if viewed as a platform, including the buick/pont/olds versions. I was in early teens when these were EVERYWHERE, and I rode in every version. Interestingly, a friend bought the last of these in the early 90s – an Olds version. very reliable, reasonably comfortable american transportation perfectly suited to american needs- before the minivan craze and taurus styling wiped it out.

The US was in a euro-crush at that time, it wasnt only GM slapping fake EURO marketing on their products, it was widespread. Laughable certainly, but try driving a tiny diesel wagon across the expanse of ohio or south dakota, and you will remember why we like soft torquey automatic cars.

Compared to the Ford Tempo, or Chrysler K variants, these were pure gold.

GM did work the bugs out of these cars, but I always thought that the Buick and Oldsmobile versions went on for far too long. By the mid-1990s, the Oldsmobile Ciera had become a 1990s version of the Valiant or Dart – reliable, but also dated and not exactly upmarket or desirable. It seriously downgraded the image of Oldsmobile, and cemented the division’s status as the car of choice for tightwad senior citizens.

My business partner just bought a last year 1990 light blue wagon with 110K on the clock from PA so it is in very nice shape and rust free. It is the Eurosport trim with the 3.1 and overdrive trans so power is quite good. The thing that sticks out about the 1990 version is not only the fact it came in wagon guise only but that all the extra cost seat options disappeared for up front. The only offering was the 50/50 split bench with the option of dual power recliners and a 6 way function for the driver. The solid bench, buckets with floor shifter and the above 45/45 with shifter were gone.

I own a 1990 base model, 3.1 4-speed auto. Silver with blue interior, picked it up 2 years ago with 109k. It has a solid/1 piece (manual) front bench. I’ve been slowly Eurosport-ifying it as I’ve come across parts for it. I recently finished redoing a set of the steel rally wheels as the ’85 pictured above has and will be getting some tires on them in a week or 2. Been a very reliable old car with decent power and handy to have around as a hauler.

I owned a diesel 85 wagon that I ordered from the factory. Almost didn’t get it because they were not going to make the engine available. As I remember it was not the same engine that was known for the problems in the other GMs. Although it did have it’s share of problems. I couldn’t find anyone to work on it because of the diesel, until I was visiting Minneapolis and found a shop there and the owner said “hell yes I will work on it.” The next words out of his mouth was “the beer is in the fridge while you wait.” I lived in KC then and I wish I could have used them again. The car got over 33 mpg when I was violating the 55 mph speed limits. In town never below 28 mpg. Had the block heater and HD suspension with air lifts as I remember. I ended up trading it to a buddy for a minivan. Had it for 4 years or so.

I tried to order this exact wagon, silver, in 1985. Fleet department said no dice; our customers will be upset that we have “high line” cars like this in the fleet. Ended up with a LTD Brougham, which was a decent car for the time….

This car albeit with the updated nose was exactly the car my grandparents bought new. My childhood camping trips with this car in this shape with a beige and white bowler lightweight hanging off the back bumper and the way back stuffed with coolers and sleeping bags. Ahh my brothers and I had some great adventures in the back of a Eurosport wagon (again) just about like this.

On the subject of the R-Class, the fixed operations manager at Plaza Motors leased one for his wife when they first came out…MB was billed $35,000 for warranty repairs on that POS in the first 3 years. I don’t know anyone who had an R-Class that liked it.